I think that's the crux of it. Society has got more complex with industrialisation and globalisation. There's those at the top who have autonomy and are well paid and then you have an army of workers at the bottom who have no say in anything. Capitalism is fundamentally about exploiting labour - you have to extract more value from the worker than it costs to hire him to make a profit. Exploiting labour has become a lot easier in the last 40 years with developing countries joining the labour pool.